His principal work, Le Phénomène humain (completed 1946, published 1955, trs. as The Phenomenon of Man, 1959), espouses a synthesis of science and religion, seeing the universe as a system evolving from stage to stage towards higher forms of consciousness, aimed at an eventual unity with God. The vision has philosophical roots in Bergson. Although influential in its time, its claims to rational respectability were exploded by the biologist Peter Medawar in a famous review in Mind, 1961.